Revival And Change

The trend of classicism in modern Chinese literature is a meaningful event in the history of 20th century Chinese literature, which deserves critic attention and study. As modern Chinese literary study has progressed in width and depth, the trend of classicism is coming to the foreground of academia. But from a comprehensive perspective, it is still a subject that needs further exploration and systematic study. Based on the results of other relevant researches, this dissertation aims at tracing out the development of classicism, describing its historical features and basic characteristics, and orienting it in culture and aesthetics. Usually classicism can be divided into two kinds: in a narrow sense, classicism refers to the literary movement and thoughts occurred in France and Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries; in a broad sense, it indicates an essential literary spirit and aesthetic ideal, which is mainly characterized with reconciliation between contradictions, pursuit of harmony and balance, and stress on adequacy and moderation. Its usual discourse includes tradition, authority, sobriety, equipoise and criterion. As a general literary spirit and aesthetic trend, classicism has manifested itself more or less in literature from the ancient time to the present, and from abroad to home. Modern Chinese literature is certainly no exception. In the vehemently changing and transforming context, classicism in Chinese literature has made its continuous existence, though on the margin of modern Chinese literature. At the very beginning, the Xueheng School took the lead; and then via the advocacy of Liang Shiqiu, the spokesman of the Crescent School, classicism involved deeper and wider in modern Chinese literature. Xueheng School and Liang Shiqiu were self-conscious representatives of classicism, which displayed itself in their cultural position, aesthetic ideal and theoretic status. The literary thoughts of Qian Zhongshu, the Jiuye poets Yuan Kejia and Tangshi, and Yu Guangzhong also shared something similar to classicism. From Xueheng School's stressing on morality to the Crescent School's emphasizing on metrics, again to Beijing School's insistence on a harmony between form and content, classicism in Chinese literature had undergone a process from unilateral to comprehensive, from bigoted to relatively proficient, and from pure theoretical construction to application in the literary creation. Stressing not only some general and eternal literary elements but also the basic criterion and spirit, classicism sought changes according to concrete literary 'scene'. Classicism in modern Chinese literature is essentially the product of 'modernity'. It has offered an adequate literary narration to the developing countries to maintain their own culture in the process of modernization. Such positive significance cannot be obliterated. Like other literary trends, classicism in modern Chinese literature is the result of collision and integration of Chinese literature with foreign literature. Its coming-into-being is on the one hand under the powerful influence of westernconception, especially western classicism, on the other hand it has quite different growing background and environment to that of the west, for classicism in Chinese literature was born and developed in Chinese cultural and realistic context. Therefore it varies greatly in theme, purport and style compared to western classicism. We cannot simply use western models to interpret classicism in modern Chinese literature, for classicism in modern Chinese literature is not transplanted as a whole from the west, but regulated and reconstructed. It is not an intact copy of western classicism, but a new synthesis or 'revival'. As for the method and approach, I am going to treat classicism in modern Chinese literature as one trend in the complicated and plural-situated modern Chinese literature, try to reveal and scan its characteristics in a comparison with other literary trends, using both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives, co...